Sexually explicit e-mails sink new Omaha schools chief

One topic of conversation today among Iowans and their Nebraskan neighbors continues to be the sexually explicit e-mails the outgoing Des Moines schools superintendent and soon-to-be Omaha schools chief sent to her lover, sometimes during school days and on school computers.

The Des Moines Register broke the e-mail scandal involving Nancy Sebring, who resigned Saturday from the Omaha job she was to have started July 1. She resigned May 10 as Des Moines superintendent, saying she needed time to prepare for the Nebraska job and to help with her daughter's wedding. Sebring, 57, is married.

The Des Moines district forbids using school computers or e-mail accounts for personal correspondence and prohibits the exchange of sexually explicit materials.

The Register, published by Gannett, USA TODAY's parent company, obtained the e-mails through an open-records request. They show that "messages to and from Sebring and a male lover were sent using Sebring's official district email account, sometimes on a district-issued laptop and iPad. Some of the messages were sent during the school day. The emails between the two spanned from at least March 26 to May 8. School officials have said the man, who is married, does not work in the district," the paper writes.

The Register writes that Sebring's "high-profile professional demise will likely serve as a wake-up call to public officials across the country."

Sebring and her lover exchanged at least 40 e-mails over a six-week period using the public schools' e-mail account, with 12 involving sex.

Several more referenced sex acts, but did not describe them. Others refer to photos of the man's penis. In one e-mail, Sebring admits looking "periodically" at a photo during the workday, "which gets my heart racing a bit."

On Friday, informed of the Register's intention to publish some of the emails, Sebring said she was disappointed.

"I want to say that I do think every individual's entitled to have a private life, even public employees, and I am deeply disappointed that the Register would consider this newsworthy. But it doesn't make me regret having been here in Des Moines, working hard for kids, living in the city — it's a great city. It would be my hope that people be allowed to have a private life and be in public service. If that's not the case, then where will people come from to do the work we do."

On Saturday morning, Sebring repeated earlier acknowledgments that she had made mistakes and that she was sorry. She could not be reached for further comment later in the day.

Rick Green, Register editor and vice president of news, said the Register published a selected set of emails online "so the public can better understand why the Des Moines school board and Sebring agreed on her abrupt and sooner-than-expected departure. Until the Register obtained these emails, board members had not revealed the reason for her immediate resignation."

The Register, which filed initial and revised open-records requests on May 9, 10 and 16, blacked out segments of e-mails deemed inappropriate, to comply with the paper's guidelines, Green said.

The Omaha World-Herald had filed a records request May 7, three days before Sebring announced her early departure. On May 9, Des Moines school board leaders confronted her about the sexually explicit e-mails, which were found during the Omaha paper's record request.

Sebring then persuaded the World-Herald reporter to modify his record request so it wouldn't include such personal e-mails as "her sister congratulating her about the Omaha job," the paper explains.

The World-Herald says it was unaware of the sexually explicit e-mails and agreed "to narrow its request to deal specifically with communications to and from people in Omaha."

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About Doug Stanglin

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